Hungarian winners at the most significant regional SSC event

Hungarian nominees have won in five categories at the Central Eastern European Shared Services and Outsourcing Awards gala event in Warsaw. The city of Debrecen, British Telecom (BT ROC), British Petrol (BP GBS) and Tata Consultancy Services were awarded this year at the most important regional event of the shared service sector (SSC).

This years award-winners at the gala event

Organised for the fifth time in 2017, the Central Eastern European Shared Services and Outsourcing Awards event has grown to the most significant event in the shared service sector in the Central and Eastern European region. Today, the region is a significant and world-class destination for shared service centres and the outsourcing of business processes. The sector has become a real success story in recent years, most of the companies present in Hungary are expanding their service portfolio, bringing even more complex and high added-value processes to Hungary.

After BT ROCs success last year – by winning the "SSC of the Year" award – Hungarian SSCs and BPOs were awarded again: BPs centre in Budapest has inherited the "SSC of the Year" title, while BT ROC won the "Best University-Business Cooperation of the Year" category. Besides becoming the "BPO Firm of the Year", TCSs General Manager, Prabal Datta also won the "Business Centre Manager of the Year" title.

Moreover, this year not only companies were awarded: the city of Debrecen earned the "Emerging city of the Year" award, which is a great feedback to the competitiveness of the whole Hungarian business and investment environment. The SSC sector showed dynamic growth in Debrecen last year, which is well-represented by the numbers: more than 3,000 people are working in this sector, employed by companies like BT, EPAM, IT Services, Transcomsos, or the most recent newcomer from the USA, Flowserve.

Debrecen won the "Emerging City of the Year" award

By participating in the event, HIPA aims at reaching out to potential investors in the sector directly in Poland, which is four times as big as Hungary in terms of its population.

In the case of every industry, operators must continuously strive for renewal and innovation in order to meet their customers' demand as efficiently as possible. In this respect, service and outsourcing sectors have always been in the vanguard and can continue to count on the support of the Hungarian Government – emphasised in his address Róbert Ésik, President of HIPA.

The SSC sector is especially important also in the case of Hungary: most of the new jobs have been created in this sector after the automotive industry in recent years. This trend also appears in the investment projects managed by HIPA: with respect to the number of investment projects managed by HIPA and the jobs created by them, the SSC sector was the second strongest sector in Hungary after the automotive industry, in 2016. In addition, the SSC sector is considered a high added value area, which provides excellent career opportunities and a promising vision to those working in the sector.

The first shared service centres (SSCs) appeared in Hungary in the 1990s, and the sector has been continuously and dynamically growing ever since. Initially, primarily simple transaction activities (customer service, HR and standardised financial tasks) were outsourced to Hungary, which were followed, as a result of positive experiences, by increasingly complex, higher added value tasks. Due to over two decades of experience, Hungary is now considered a well-established mature location where the majority of the projects come from Western Europe and the USA. At present, more than 100 companies operate service centres in our country, employing approximately 42,000 people, mainly young specialists who speak foreign languages.